Monday, December 31, 2007

New Year's Eve Reflection

Tonight as I have for the last two New Year's Eves prior, I'll be working at JJ's Blues. Today marks the second year (to the day) that I've been working there as House Photographer shooting musicians in some dark conditions. Ironically Brad Kava, a great friend, will be opening tonight with his band, Doghouse Riley, the first band I went there to photograph (as a favor to him), and soon after started working there.

In two years the stage lights have gotten brighter and I've been able to help influence the color gels used, so now they have more greens and blues and less red. Red while dramatic and intense often looks awful on skin tones when its the only or predominant stage light.

Shooting in dark conditions has surely helped how I shoot in equally dark scenes including in churches at weddings, and some of the anticipation I've learned shooting musicians has translated into weddings and vice versa.

Working in the same club has also shown me how to really bend my creative processes to come up with new ideas, such as shooting the subject and the mirror image which I first did during a long set by Jason Ricci (a technique I also used in wedding photos including one of my favorite images ever (still the first photo on my web splash page).

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